photography

The uses for the Flickr API never cease to amaze me. One of them that I've been playing with for the past week is Phrasr, a service that takes several words you throw at it and spits them back out as photos from Flickr.

You can individually change each photo to better suite the word. I found it to be pretty off the mark on most words, but spot on for others. Half the fun is exploring additional photos to get a better match.

When you're done selecting your photos you can then publish the phrase to everyone … Read more

If you're looking to put together a Valentine's Day collage for your sweetie, it's mighty late to be worrying about creative gifts from the heart. So get a jump on that photo mashup (or is that car crash?) you've been planning for next year's Valentine's Day with PhotoScape, a freeware image editor that's surprisingly feature-rich.

… Read more

Photographers whose work appears online--and nowadays that's just about all of them, really--are all too aware of how easily their photos can be misappropriated. They can add a watermark on each picture, of course, but that typically involves post-shoot work with image-editing software. Canon apparently sees an opportunity to automate the process on the camera--making use of biometric data courtesy of the photographer's iris.

Read more about the patent at the Photography Bay blog: "Canon's Iris Registration Mode - Biological Copyright Metadata"

While Getty Images continues to look around for someone to buy them, the rising Internet-based stock image house PhotoShelter today announced that it has hired two new executives, one of which it hired away from Getty. When it launched its stock image business called the PhotoShelter Collection late last year, the company promised to invest $1 million toward promoting the Collection's images among buyers of stock photography. As part of this effort, the company has hired former American Express Senior Product Manager Andrew Fingerman to be PhotoShelter's new vice president of marketing, and Getty Images' former market development … Read more

Update 11:35 a.m.: I added information about Aperture 2.0's plug-in architecture, which could provide an advantage over Adobe Lightroom.

After pioneering a high-end photography software niche, then losing ground to Adobe Systems' Photoshop Lightroom, Apple on Tuesday counterattacked with Aperture 2.0.

The software, like Adobe's Lightroom, is aimed at enthusiasts and professionals who need to edit and catalog "raw" images, the unprocessed data from higher-end cameras' image sensors; raw files preserve more detail than JPEGs but require time and specialized software that can deal with the profusion of different proprietary raw formats. … Read more

Polaroid, famed for photographic prints that develop within moments, is getting out of the film business.

The company is shutting down two plants in Massachusetts used to make film for professionals and artists this quarter, The Boston Globe reported Friday. A similar plant in Mexico and one in the Netherlands for making consumer film packages will close by the end the year, and the company already has stopped making instant-film cameras, Polaroid said.

The Massachusetts-based company is interested in licensing its film technology to others, but if it doesn't happen, its film will likely run out in 2009. Meanwhile, … Read more

I apparently ruffled some feathers among Flickerites (of which I'm one by the way), when I suggested last week that maybe it wouldn't be so terrible were someone else, even Microsoft, to take a shot at upgrading a service given that Yahoo has shown so little inclination to do so.

Now, I'm by no means convinced that Microsoft is the right company for this particular job. At the same time, I can't help but feel that Flickr has largely stagnated--even if that stagnation feels safe and comfortable to a lot of current users.

There's no … Read more

Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix.

Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work.

According to Adobe's FAQ on the matter, the company is getting out of the … Read more

There are probably too many electrons already being spilt today on Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo. Rather than delving into the $45 billion aspects of the deal, I'm going to specifically discuss Flickr, Yahoo's popular photo sharing service.

Flickr hasn't been a big part of the general online buzzing about this proposed deal. In part, this is doubtless because it's a small part of Yahoo's financials. It's probably also because most people have at best a vague awareness that Flickr is even a part of Yahoo. Yahoo bought Flickr and has largely left … Read more